Chapter 2- Betrayed

Something went wrong, and Harry doesn't seem to care!

She blinked, dazed. Where was she?

“Hey, sleeping beauty.”

Harry was already awake, eyes shining with excitement. But of more immediate importance, they were STILL ON the helicopter.

Her first thought was blind panic. She was going to get caught; they were going to be kicked out of The Organization. And this job was her life. Literally. Outside of it, she had nothing.

“S**t! Oh, s**t, Harry we’re not supposed to be awake.”

“Oh, wash your mouth out with soap, will you? Of course we’re not supposed to be awake!” Harry was amazing calm for someone who was about to lose the best (and only) job he had ever had, “But, seeing as we are, we may as well have a little fun with it.”

“We’ll get fired, you idiot!”

Harry remained unfazed. She was still in panic, but annoyance was also starting to seep through. How could he be so blasé about this?

“No we won’t, worry guts. They need you; you’re the best assassin they’ve got. And me, well, I’d say I’m a pretty good mission controller myself!”

“I don’t care, Harry. There’s a reason we don’t know where HQ is, and we’re not about to change that now!” He waited patiently for her, reminding her infuriatingly of a parent waiting for a toddler to finish its tantrum.

“There’s no good reason for us not to see headquarters. I mean, we’re hardly going to go sell it to a newspaper, are we?”

“Piss off, Harry. I’m going back to sleep.”

“No you’re not. You want to know just as much as I do.”

“I said piss off.”

“You know, all these rapists you’ve been sleeping with have obviously rubbed off on you. You’ve inherited their bad language.”

She responded by spitting every swear word she knew at him. There were a lot.

“C’mon, you know you don’t mean it.”

“Dick-head.”

“You know you love me really,” he was still smiling, still joking around, but he was obviously impatient to get out of their holding cell. That reminded her.

They were in a glass chamber, with no windows or doors: no visible way out. It was confusing- how had they gotten in? How would they eventually get out? The chamber was in the middle of a very technological looking room full of control panels and buttons. Even while awake, they had no way of knowing where they were. She didn’t even know how long she’d been asleep, seeing as both their watches had been removed, along with all their other possessions.

“Harry, you do realise-“

“Shhh!”

Faint voices issued from the other side of the door leading into their room.

“...Five minutes till landing.”

“They’ll be waking up soon...”

“Yeah, I know, the flight took longer than we expected, sorry Doc, but there’s not much we can do. We’ve still got a few minutes though, right. And they’re isolated anyway, it’s not like they could possibly find out where we are.”

“I don’t know… the sedative wasn’t that strong. And…Agent C, she’s creative, when she wants to be. I wouldn’t put it past her to get them out.”

“If you’re so bloody paranoid, why don’t you go check on them?”

Harry shot a panicked glance to his companion, only to find her collapsed on the floor, breathing deeply. He too sunk to the floor and feigned sleep alongside her.

Unfortunately, Frank Stiller was not easily fooled. He walked into the technological room and made a tutting noise. She was disappointed that he didn’t somehow get into the chamber- then she might have made sense of it.

“Get up, you two. I know you’re awake- no matter what I tell those idiots.”

Neither of the convicts made any move.

“You’re not in trouble- you may as well save yourself some effort and just tell me the bleeding truth.”

Minutes passed.

The only sound was the tapping of Frank’s foot, and the deep breathing of the two prisoners.

Harry caved first. His head came up, he blinked a few times, then propped himself up on his elbows.

She was peering through her eyelashes as Harry stood up and rubbed his eyes with the air of a five year old in a school play. She groaned internally. He was an ABYSMAL liar! And Frank obviously wasn’t buying it. She was halfway tempted to just lie there while Harry got found out. They wouldn’t make her crack- not like that idiot who was now wondering around in meaningless circles as though he was drunk rather than tired. Okay, she had to save him.

She opened her eyes, blinking a little, but not overdoing it like Harry. She got up, trying to look like she assumed they were there already.

“Harry?” she murmured under-theatrically, there was too much over-acting on Harry’s part for them to be able to afford any more.

Harry was still playing duck-duck goose without a circle, and didn’t notice her, at which point she realised she was going to have to do this alone.

“Frank?” she asked innocently.

“Yes?”

“Um, not to sound like a seven year old or anything, but are we there yet?”

Frank laughed, but the sound was off, he was still suspicious.

She tried again: “Why are we awake, are we supposed to be?”

“What do you think?” heavy sarcasm, “Of course not! There was a little delay, though it’s nothing you should worry about.”

“So...you’re not going to sedate us again?” She could feel the helicopter dipping and confusion swept over her- she didn’t like it. But she could see that Frank was beginning to buy it- if only Harry would stop stretching and yawning.

“No, what’s the point? You can’t get out of your darling little jail cell at any rate, and my sedatives are designed to last for...well...” he realised he’d let key information go, and he trailed off. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t said the exact time; she was smart enough to know that that meant the drugs were meant to last a long time. She wasn’t even sure if they were in Britain anymore. But nowhere further than Europe, as Frank still looked pretty much the same as he had the last time she’d seen him. She quickly ran through the likely possibilities: France, Germany, Russia, Italy and Spain. Possibly Norway. Maybe even Scotland or Ireland. All the places the organisation had ties to. The USA would have been a candidate too, had it been closer to home.

She’d never been outside the air-conditioned halls of the actual HQ building before, so a difference in temperature wouldn’t have registered. And she hadn’t ever really paid attention to the windows. Stupid! She told herself. You must always be aware of your surroundings! How could she have let slip, and in such a major way!

Wait a minute- air conditioning! Air conditioning and not heating. So it wasn’t Scotland, Norway or Russia, and probably not Germany. And it couldn’t be in the Alps region of France. But it was unwise to rule out options unless you were certain, so Germany and France were still possibilities, although she confidently ruled out the other three. She felt better about her deductive skills now.

And despite herself, she was curious. She did want to know, no matter what she told Harry.

And she knew that Frank wasn’t as confident as he seemed. He had said there was no possibility they would get out of their cell, to their faces. His words in the hall told a different story.

All this passed through her head in a matter of seconds, and all the while she gave neither Frank nor Harry any indication that she was discovering anything of particular importance.

She sat down again, acting defeated.

A tinny voice buzzed through a speaker in the left corner of the room.

“Landing in five...four...three...”

“Here!” a small, shiny object flew straight through the glass cage, and landed on the floor. Frank smiled a toothy grin, “You’ll need it.”

He left.

There was a click as the door locked.

There was a jolting impact as the helicopter hit the ground with a jarring bump. Harry fell over- she was already sitting down. She picked up the silver key and hissed in frustration- how the hell were they supposed to know what the key meant? And…why had Frank simply handed them a way out?

But...the key had flown right through the glass...

Harry got there first.

“It must be some new techno junk that Stiller thought up. A key with no door. Just the kind of thing a maniac thinks of.”

She tried turning the key in the glass and…

Her hand went straight through.  Tentatively, she raised her foot and walked through the glass, and back in…And out...And in…And out...

“Give me a go.”

She’d almost forgotten Harry was there. She handed him the key and he too experienced the wonder and excitement and just plain weirdness of passing straight through glass.

“How do we both get through?” he asked, like she had all the answers.

But she did have an idea.

“If the key held some current, some electrical energy that could pass through one human- well, maybe it could pass through two?” It was crazy. Only something the Organization would have thought up, with their technology that surpassed the standards of predictions 50 years in the future. 

He reached out his hand, and she took it. They passed through the glass as though they were not made of substance, as though they were ghosts or spirits of some sort.

They were out- but there was still something she wanted to try.

The door was locked, she was almost certain of that, so she dragged Harry along with her and they breezed through the door as easily as they had through the glass. It was strange, impossible...magical. No, not magical- scientific. She didn’t believe in that ‘magic’ crap.

A nagging worry was still in her head though. What if this was all a trap? Why had Frank given them the key and just left them to do anything with it? Was he on their side, or just plotting to get them fired- or worse...disposed of?

But Harry didn’t seem to be worried. He was peering inquisitively at the walls, as though thinking he could see through them. He couldn’t, of course. Why was he so obsessed with finding out where they were? For some reason this irritated her. He was so...self-absorbed! Didn’t he care that she had nothing else in the world but The Organization and- though she hated to admit it- him!

She let go.

“We’re going to find Frank- the normal way. And then we’ll return his key, and then we’ll go to the bloody meeting, and we’ll pretend nothing happened, okay?”

She knew she’d confused him with her harsh words, but the angry tears that pricked at the back of her eyes reminded her of his selfishness and she continued glaring at him.

She had nothing else in the world.

 

Author's Note

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